As states across the country are relaxing their marijuana laws and federal lawmakers consider doing the same, at least one state is bucking the trend and ramping up its war on pot. Marijuana arrests in Virginia have increased dramatically over the past decade, according to a new report from the Drug Policy Alliance, a group that advocates for drug policy reform. And black Virginians account for the overwhelming majority of this increase, causing the racial disparity in the state's marijuana arrests to widen.

The New England Conference of United Methodist Churches voted this past Saturday on a resolution declaring that the Christian thing to do is end the failed War on Drugs, in part by ending the prohibition on drugs in our country.

Two Mississippi cannabis reform organizations have joined forces to end marijuana prohibition in their state, and if successful will pull off one of the most comprehensive pieces of citizen-generated legislation dealing with cannabis that we have seen yet. Proposition 48 is a ballot initiative that would not only legalize both medical and recreational marijuana in Mississippi but industrial hemp production as well. Additionally, Prop 48 calls on the Mississippi Governor to pardon all persons convicted of non-violent marijuana crimes.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reports 2.2 million people are in our nation's jails and prisons and another 4.5 million people are on probation or parole in the U.S., totaling 6.8 million people, one of every 35 adults. We are far and away the world leader in putting our own people in jail. Most of the people inside are poor and Black. Here are 40 reasons why.

The photo shows two white Chicago Police officers posing with an unidentified black man. The officers — Timothy McDermott and Jerome Finnigan — are holding rifles as the black man lies on the floor with a dazed look on his face and with antlers on his head as if he were a prized, big buck finally hunted down.

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Ray Charles Staten Sr. should have celebrated his 60th birthday this month. Instead, his family marked the fourth anniversary of his death. It all started, according to a lawsuit that settled in March 2015, when a small debt became a death sentence in the spring of 2011.

The dean of the law school at the University of the District of Columbia urged students to take part in protests in Baltimore, even offering to defer an exam for those who help people on the street with legal advice.

Ruthlessly wielding its power over those who dared to take to the streets to challenge it, Baltimore judges and other law enforcement officials have come down insanely hard on protesters, suspending habeus corpus to prolong holding uncharged suspects, setting wildly excessive bail amounts - $500,000 for the 18-year-old kid widely seen smashing the state in the form of a cop car, and disappearing at least one peaceful activist, on live TV yet - abuses that in fact help shine a spotlight on the venal, broken system that sparked it all.